The Luminaries

down an anchor’, as the diggers termed it, and invest.
    On the morning of the 18th of June Staines woke early. He had spent the night at a flophouse in Kaniere, a long, low clapboard shanty with a lean-to kitchen and hammocks strung in tiers. There was a damp chill in the air; as he dressed, his breath showed white. Outside, he paid a halfpenny for a plate of porridge, ladled from a steaming vat, and ate standing, gazing eastward to where the ridge of the high Alps formed a crisp silhouette against the winter sky. When the plate was clean he returned it to the hatch, tipped his hat to his fellows, and set off for Hokitika, where he intended to make an appointment with a gold buyer preparatory to purchasing a claim.
    As he came around the river to the spit he perceived a ship make its stately approach into the neck of the harbour; it glided into the roadstead and seemed to hover, broadside to the river, in the deep water on the far side of the bar. Staines admired the craft as he walked around the long curve of the quay. It was a handsome three-masted affair, none too large, with a figurehead carved in the shape of an eagle, its beak wide and screaming, its wings outspread. There was a woman at the portside rail: from this distance Staines could not make out her face, much less her expression, but he supposed that she was lost in a reverie, for she stood very still, both hands gripping the rail, her skirts whipping about her legs, the strings of her bonnet slapping at her breast. He wondered what preoccupied her—whether she was absorbed in a memory, a scene recalled, or in a forecast, something that she wished for, something that she feared.
    At the Reserve Bank he produced his kid pouch of dust, and, at the banker’s request, surrendered its contents to be examined and weighed. The valuation took some time, but the eventual price offered was a good one, and Staines left the building with a paper note made out for twenty pounds folded in his vest pocket, against his heart.
    ‘Stop you there, lad.’
    Staines turned. On the steps of the bank, just rising, was a sandy-haired man, perhaps fifty in age. His skin was very weathered , and his nose very red. He sported a patchy week-old beard, the stubble of which was quite white.
    ‘Can I help you?’ said Staines.
    ‘You can answer me a couple of questions,’ said the man. ‘Here’s the first. Are you a Company man?’
    ‘I’m not a Company man.’
    ‘All right. Here’s the second. Honesty or loyalty?’
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Honesty or loyalty,’ said the man. ‘Which do you value higher?’
    ‘Is this a trick?’
    ‘A genuine inquiry. If you wouldn’t mind.’
    ‘Well,’ said Staines, frowning slightly, ‘that’s very difficult to say—which to value higher. Honesty or loyalty. From a certain point of view one might say that honesty is a kind of loyalty—a loyalty to the truth … though one would hardly call loyalty a kind of honesty ! I suppose that when it came down to it—if I had to choose between being dishonest but loyal, or being disloyal but honest—I’d rather stand by my men, or by my country, or by my family, than by the truth. So I suppose I’d say loyalty … in myself. But in others … in the case of others, I feel quite differently. I’d much prefer an honest friend to a friend who was merely loyal to me; and I’d much rather
be
loyal to an honest friend than to a sycophant. Let’s say that my answer is conditional: in myself, I value loyalty; in others, honesty.’
    ‘That’s good,’ said the man. ‘That’s very good.’
    ‘Is it?’ said Staines, smiling now. ‘Have I passed some kind of a test?’
    ‘Almost,’ said the man. ‘I’m after a favour. In good faith—and on your terms. Look here—’
    He reached into his pocket and withdrew a nugget, around the size of a short cigar. He held it up, so that it caught the light. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’
    ‘Very nice,’ said Staines, but he was no longer smiling.
    The man continued. ‘Picked this up in the Clutha Valley. Otago way. Been carrying it about for a month—two months—but I’m wanting to turn it into land, you see—got my eye on a patch of land—and the land agent won’t touch anything but paper money. Here’s the problem. I’ve been robbed. Got no proof of my ownidentity. My papers, my miner’s right. Everything’s gone. So I can’t bank this nugget on my own accord.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Staines.
    ‘What I’m after is a favour. You take